


between the shadow and the soul

by nadin



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Canon - Movie, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 20:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20121358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadin/pseuds/nadin
Summary: WonderTrev love week 2019Day 2 - The morning afterSteve Trevor knows better than anyone that no promise is ever unbreakable - has known it for a long time. But after he makes one to Diana, he is adamant to keep it, even if it takes a hundred years.(or the one about three mornings they will never forget)





	between the shadow and the soul

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, let's face it - I am and always will be a sucker for every story that takes place in Veld, period. And also, Steve from 1918 being lurched into the 21st century is just too fun to write, so... I present to you:  
\- the morning after Steve and Diana spend the night together;  
\- the morning after Steve dies;  
\- the morning after he comes back.  
With a dash of fluff here and there! 
> 
> A shoutout and a special huge thank you to my friend and beta **akajb** who has been a real trooper so far with my insane writing, for which I'm eternally grateful :)

** _Veld, 1918_ **

_“Stay,” Diana whispers against his lips._

_He wants to say something – anything – but then she tilts her face, pressing her mouth to his once more and Steve forgets how to think for a long, long time._

\---

The first time Steve woke up, the day outside the small, fogged-up window was early and grey. It couldn’t have possibly been more than a few minutes past dawn, and everything in him protested against the idea of being up at this ungodly hour. Not when he had a chance to sleep in a real bed for the first time in a while – a luxury that he couldn’t afford to take for granted. Not after thin, lumpy blankets that did little to protect him from the chilly November wind, and the cold ground, and Charlie’s snoring.

There definitely hadn’t been any snoring last night.

Steve blinked sleepily, taking in the sloped ceiling above him and the faded wallpaper and framed picture on the wall opposite from the bed that he couldn’t quite make out from his spot. Small things that he hadn’t paid attention to the previous night because--

The memories came rushing back then – No Man’s Land, the liberation of Veld, dancing in the snow.

_Diana_.

He lifted his head, overcome momentarily with panic when his hand reached over to brush against the empty spot beside him, his heart giving a hollow, dull thud against the inside of his ribs.

Surely, he hadn’t dreamed _that_. Not the part where they had…

For one awful, dreadful moment he thought that he had, in fact, made it up – God knew, it wouldn’t have been the first time. His gaze swept over the room twice before he finally spotted her – very much present and somewhat more real in the daylight than she had been in the flickering firelight a few hours ago.

Definitely not _that_ part.

Wrapped in a sheet, her hair falling down her back, Diana was crouched by the hearth, her brows knitted together in concentration as she prodded at the logs with the iron poker.

She hadn’t noticed yet that he was awake, and Steve took his chance to study her, taking in the angle of her jaw, and the softness of her features in the morning light, and the contrast between her olive skin and the white sheet. So beautiful it hurt to look.

A spark from the logs shot up in the air, the fire catching up at last. Steve watched her set the poker aside, leaning it against the wall. And that was when Diana looked up, noticing him.

“Steve.”

“Morning,” he muttered, his voice low and croaky from sleep. He stifled a yawn as he pushed up to sit. “What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing her curiously and wondering why on Earth was she there, all the way across the room and not in bed next to him.

Diana pressed her lips around a smile, her eyes crinkling a little at the corners, and his pulse stuttered momentarily as something warm unspooled in his chest. He cleared his throat, trying to gather his thoughts. It didn’t appear to work, not really.

“It was getting cold,” she explained, which was sort of obvious, now that he was thinking about it.

“I didn’t think you—” Steve started and faltered. “I thought you didn’t really feel that.” And then added as an afterthought, “_much_.”

For a few moments, she simply watched him, her eyes twinkling with amusement. And Steve wondered for, perhaps, the millionth time since the previous evening how exactly had he managed to fall for her so hard, so fast, and so completely.

“I don’t,” she confirmed, allowing that majestic smile of hers to emerge at last. She gave him a pointed look. “But you do.”

“It’s not that bad,” he tried to downplay it, to sound casual. (He probably sounded like a moron, considering the room was nearly freezing and there was a shiver gathering up his spine, but Steve couldn’t care less about that.)

Diana merely arched an eyebrow at him.

Yeah, well. He hadn’t been cold a while ago when her body had been pressed beneath him, her hands on his skin and his mind spiralling into oblivion. Not even after the fire had gone out, Steve wanted to tell her.

Instead, with the memories still swirling in his mind, what came out was a quiet, “Come here.”

Not quite a plea, although it wouldn’t have been beyond him to go there. But his voice did drop a notch, turning hoarse. He’d be happy to fall to his knees before her if she so wished, Steve thought as Diana rose slowly to her feet, uncurling from her crouch with much more grace than he’d ever exhibit, even if he tried.

Steve watched her take the four steps that separated them, her hand bunched around a fistful of the sheet, holding it in place. Watched her lips curve in a slow smile as she watched him back. At that moment, he was certain that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

(Steve was fairly sure that if he looked in a mirror right now, he’d see his every thought written across his face, clear as day. Not that he wanted to look in a mirror. He only wanted to look at Diana.)

When she was close enough, he reached for her hand, his fingers curling around her wrist. Even though it would have taken her no effort at all to overpower him, Diana allowed him to tug her down until she was sitting next to him.

_I want every morning to start like this for as long as I breathe_, he thought, leaning forward.

“Good morning,” she whispered, bumping her nose playfully against his.

And then he kissed her, his hand moving to rest on the back of her neck. And kissed her, and kissed her until he was dizzy and drunk on her, and it still didn’t feel like enough.

“Morning,” he repeated against her mouth.

“Is it time?” Diana murmured, bringing him back to the awareness of the day ahead of them and the gala and Ludendorff and that the fate of the rest of the world hinged on the success of their mission.

Steve pushed it away.

“No,” he said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, his eyes searching hers. “Not yet.”

Not for a few hours, at least.

She didn’t argue. Didn’t stop him when he tugged at the sheet, allowing it to fall away from her body, either. They had time, Steve thought, gathering her to him, the fire burning inside of him hotter than the flames that had sparked to life in the hearth.

They had time…

He didn’t mean to fall asleep, afterwards. He wanted to stay in that moment with Diana – one of those moments that people tended to remember for the rest of their lives – with their legs tangled and her fingers running absently along his clavicle and a sense of contentment the likes of which Steve couldn’t recall experiencing before unfurling around the space where his heart thumped with abandon in his chest.

But they had stayed up late the night before, talking about everything and nothing as the fire had turned to embers that had turned to ash. And the exhaustion of the past, oh, _two years_ must have caught up with him at last.

It couldn’t have been more than an hour later when he slid into awareness once more, still worn out and yet oddly wired in equal measure. The sun was up this time, having chased away the clouds from the night before. Filtering through the thin curtains on the window, it was filling the room with a soft glow.

It took him a moment to realize that it was the voices outside that had roused him, the village waking up free for the first time in months. (One of those voices sounded very much like Charlie’s, but as groggy as he was, Steve couldn’t tell for sure.) And then another moment to register that his arm was still wrapped around Diana – it had fallen asleep but, given the chance, Steve would have happily stayed right there, the uncomfortable tingling in the tips of his fingers be damned, for as long as she’d let him.

Diana lifted her head off his chest, looking more alert than he felt.

He brushed her hair from her face, his eyes searching hers. Last night, he had half-feared that things would be different in the morning, sharp in that odd way that only daylight seemed to bring out. But they weren’t, and now he almost wished they were because maybe then the idea of getting out of this bed and letting go of this woman who fit so perfectly in the circle of his arms wouldn’t have felt so unbearable.

A burst of laughter exploded outside, loud in the clear morning air.

“This is our cue, I guess,” Steve sighed, brushing his thumb over Diana’s jawline.

“I suppose it is,” she echoed.

“I’d rather stay here,” he confessed, summoning a smile that felt a little too tight around the edges.

It was not fair that the previous two years had felt like they had lasted a decade, but the one night that he _wanted_ to last forever ended in a blink.

“Me, too,” Diana admitted, and Steve’s heart slammed against his ribs.

They could do that, he thought absently. Lock the door, shut off the rest of the world and drown in each other. It was not impossible. But even as the thought crossed his mind, he knew that it was nothing but the wishful thinking of a desperate man who had long lost his faith in anything but violence and distraction and who had finally found hope again. One who wanted to hold on to it for as long as he could. Just this once… 

But there were people who depended on them, innocent people who would die if they didn’t stop a madman who had set his mind on playing God. Ares or no Ares – and Steve had yet to figure out for himself if there was anything to Diana’s story but a legend that she believed to be true – Ludendorff was not going to stop until someone put an end to his plan. Until someone located the gas and destroyed it.

Steve couldn’t take that hope away from the rest of the world for his own selfish reasons. The fact that he had managed to fall in love sometime between plummeting down from the sky and waking up this morning with Diana in his arms shouldn’t have been relevant. Not as far as everyone else was concerned.

It shouldn’t have been, he thought, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. But it was. To him, it was. 

Shaving using a small mirror hanging above the hearth, cold water, and a travel kit where the blade had grown dull and needed proper sharpening turned out being a rather questionable pleasure. Steve decided he didn’t have much of a choice as his hand moved expertly over his cheeks. He needed to look as neat and presentable as a man attending a gala, of all events, should.

The thought resonated with a cold pang in the pit of his stomach.

He pushed it aside and took a deep breath, trying to focus on the task at hand, oddly grateful for the first time in the past ten minutes that the blade in his hand wasn’t anywhere near sharp enough for him to accidentally slice his own throat. Small mercies, he supposed.

He wiped the remnants of the soap from his cheeks, examining his less than stellar job before deciding that it was satisfactory enough.

Behind him, Diana was affixing her armour around her body, her hands moving with ease as she fastened the buckles that kept it in place, her expression focused but untroubled. If Steve was a ball of jittery nerves, then she was whatever the opposite of that was called. And just like every time he’d looked at her in the past three days, his heart gave a wistful tug. He tried to breathe past the longing building in his chest, taking up the space where the courage used to live as he watched her reflection in the mirror, suddenly not trusting himself to turn around and look at her.

And suddenly, he was afraid.

Two years ago, Steve had walked into this war knowing full well that not everyone he’d meet would live to see the end of it. It was unfair and unjust but such was the price of peace sometimes, and he had long accepted that if he ended up pulling the short straw in that deal, he would be content in knowing that he had died for a good cause. He loved Sameer and Charlie and Chief – and there was an odd kind of gratitude he felt towards the carnage that had allowed their paths to cross – but he had also made peace with the idea of possibly, maybe, losing them as well.

Looking at Diana now, he realized that it was not enough. That he didn’t just want to stop Ludendorff and put an end to his madness. He wanted to end up on the other side of that plan alive. For the first time in his life, Steve Trevor wanted _more_. And the thought was a thousand times more frightening than the idea of walking into the lion’s den in just a few hours and dealing with an army of angry Germans and their maniac of a leader.

More terrifying than anything he had ever experienced.

He looked away from Diana as he packed his shaving supplies away and stuffed them into his tote bag.

In a few hours, it would be over. One way or another, the war would end today. And for the first time since he had landed in London all those months ago, Steve had no idea what to expect.

He grabbed the boots left by the door and walked over to the bed where Diana was sitting as she put her greaves on.

(The memory of him taking them off the night before, his hand shaking a little and his fingers feeling ten times too big and too clumsy for the task flared in Steve’s mind, his face growing hot momentarily.

And it made him wonder—

It wasn’t like he had never been in this situation before, Steve reasoned with himself. But also… he truly had never been in this situation before. Not with someone like Diana and that feeling in his chest that he couldn’t put into words yet unfurling inside of him, the enormity of it terrifying.)

He lowered down to sit next to her, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. He was suddenly very aware that they had minutes left to spare until the real world outside this door would claim them both, and the thought that there wasn’t enough time to do everything he wanted to do and to say everything he wanted to say sent his heart into a frenzy.

He glanced at Diana out of the corner of his eye, watching her fingers move deftly. If she was concerned in the slightest about what was waiting for them in the German High Command, Steve saw no sign of it. Was it because she was so certain of their victory, he wondered. Or was it he who was wrong in overthinking it all, his unease unfounded and absurd?

On impulse, he leaned towards her and brushed a kiss to her shoulder.

Diana paused and turned to him, her lips curved into a soft smile. The exact same one he had seen the night before when they danced. It had made it hard for Steve to focus then; it was making his heart lodge itself in his throat now. He tried to swallow around it. It didn’t seem to work. (Not that he cared. Not when she was looking at him the way she did.)

His stomach twisted into a knot, and he said a silent prayer for what felt like the thousandth time in the past several hours: _Please don’t take her away from me_.

Steve didn’t know if he believed in anything, not after witnessing the worst side of humankind. Not enough to ever seriously contemplate it, anyway. But if anyone was listening, anyone at all, he figured that it was worth a shot.

Diana lifted her hand and trailed her fingers down his cheek. “It appears that we have missed breakfast,” she said, catching a snippet of conversation floating from downstairs.

Steve grinned, knowing that it came out a little too self-indulgent but unable to help it. Unable not to drop his gaze down to the bow of her mouth, either. “Yeah, well… It was worth it.”

She pressed her lips around another smile, shaking her head a little. “Indeed, it was.”

Chuckling, he watched her wrap the leather straps around the palms of her hands and then stand up, reaching for her gauntlets, the sunlight bouncing off the polished metal. The warrior emerging into the light.

He stood up, too, stepping towards Diana as she fiddled with the second one. Without another word, he reached over and fastened the last buckle, his fingers lingering on her wrist for a moment. And then another one, before he let go.

She didn’t stop him as if helping her put her armour on was the most natural thing in the world.

(Steve wished it was. Wished they could make it so. He wouldn’t have minded that in the slightest.)

The uniform that he had fetched from Sameer earlier – Sameer, who Steve was supposed to share a room with because there had not been enough to accommodate everyone, and who, mercifully, hadn’t uttered a word when Steve had walked out of Diana’s room and then right back into it – felt stiff on his body. Too tight around his shoulders. Too out of place. If there was a full-length mirror there and he could see himself the way he was right now, Steve wasn’t sure he would’ve recognized the man in the reflection.

Still, the plan was a done deal.

He watched Diana reach for him. Watched her hands work on buttoning the stolen jacket that felt nothing like his own uniform and thinking that he had liked it better when she was undressing him instead. Wishing that they could go back in time to when the morning was still hours away and the night was full of infinite possibilities.

“Diana, we could—if you’d like—” Steve started and paused, not trusting his voice.

She looked up. “What?”

He moved closer to her, lifting his hands to run them up and down her shoulders.

“I could make you breakfast,” he said, feeling a tentative smile tug at the corners of his lips as he ducked his head until his forehead was resting against hers. With her boots on, they were almost the same height, he noted absently. He took a breath. “When this is over--”

“Yes,” she said, stopping him. 

“Do other things, too,” Steve added, feeling nervous all of a sudden, the words rushing out of his mouth as if he feared that she might change her mind. _All the things that people do when there are no wars to fight_.

Diana smiled at him, her eyes searching his face.

“I’d like that,” she whispered, and if he wasn’t holding on to her, Steve was certain he would have soared straight into the sky.

“Tomorrow,” he added.

“Tomorrow,” she repeated, lifting her face to his. 

Her hand curled over his jaw, bridging what little distance was still left between them, her mouth soft and eager against his when their lips met. Steve kissed her back without hesitation, one hand on her face and another one anchored on the small of her back, the leather of her armour smooth beneath his palm. He felt her hand curl over the collar of his jacket, the other one tangled in his hair near the nape of his neck. And, heaven help him, he could have sworn that everyone in a ten-mile radius could hear the thudding of his heart against the inside of his chest.

It felt like a dream. Everything that had happened between them since the moment she had pulled him out of the water felt like a dream, and he was desperate to ground himself in this moment, with her, and believe that—

A knock on the door had them pulling back from one another.

Steve huffed in frustration and rubbed his eyes. “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath. “I suppose it's time.”

Diana nodded and stepped away from him, and just like that, the moment was gone.

Steve cleared his throat and reached for his coat draped over the back of the chair.

“Well, I guess I’ll just…” he began, speaking to no one as he stepped towards the door and stopped, turning to her again.

Diana was gathering her cloak and picking up her shield, and with the light flowing in through the window, she looked ethereal. So unreal he didn’t know what to make of it.

His throat went dry.

“Diana.”

She looked up, her eyes finding his. And just like every time that had happened in the past, he was left with his mind reeling and his stomach going through a series of somersaults.

Steve swallowed. With his hand on the knob and the war waiting for them outside, he wanted to tell her—

Wanted to tell her—

Tell her--

He took a breath.

“I… I’ll see you outside.”

Later, Steve would regret not crossing the room and not gathering her to him one last time and not telling her the words that had no right to exist yet. Not after he had known her for less than a week. He would regret not making her remember this moment on his own terms, without the darkness gathered around them and the wind and the time that was running out too fast.

But that was the one thing that Steve Trevor had learned a long time ago. Regrets were not something that one could foresee.

Sitting in the cockpit of the stolen plane hours later, his finger on the trigger as he counted to five - and then to five more because, even though he had known all along that his death was inevitable one way or another, it still frightened him - he sucked in a hungry breath, the smell of gasoline permeating his senses.

(After years and years as a pilot, he had learned to find something akin to comfort in it.)

He would close his eyes and summon Diana’s face. The sound of her voice would be the last thing he would hear before the world around him turned bright red and then pitch black.

_I love you_.

\---

** _Belgium, 1918_ **

In the years that Diana had spent in the training field — learning to wield a sword as if it were an extension of her arm and deflect attacks and defy gravity, using momentum and traction and speed to her advantage — no one had ever taught her about what came when the fight was over

Not once had anyone mentioned the silence of it. How deafening all of a sudden it could feel after hours of shouting and gunfire and the wind roaring in her ears. The stillness of the air that felt too thick against her skin.

No one had told her that even after the dust had settled, everything around her would still smell of ash. And that the longing and the emptiness inside of her would be so overbearing and consuming that she would find it hard to breathe.

Diana turned around, the airfield stretching before her all the way into the sunrise. She could hear the murmur of confused voices rising and falling all around her, too soft to get past the blood rush in her ears and the rapid hammering of her pulse. People trying to find their bearings once more.

She looked at them, searching for his face, for that one face—

Steve.

_“Tomorrow, I’ll make you breakfast.”_

His words were clear in her head, a promise she had been adamant to hold on to turning to nothing before her eyes.

_“And a promise is unbreakable,”_ Diana remembered herself telling him only a few days ago, decisive and firm.

Her foolish assuredness tasted foul on her tongue now.

Her fingers curled against the handle of her shield, the sword that she had deemed indestructible lost and the truth that her mother had held close to her heart burning in Diana’s chest.

No one had told her that the victory could leave one so hollow, so drained and numb and—

Her other hand flexed, as if to curl into a fist, and it was then that Diana realized that she was holding something. She opened her palm to find Steve’s watch still pressed into her hand, heavier than she imagined it to be.

_“I wish we had more time.”_

Her throat closed up, the sting of tears hot behind her eyes. She smoothed her thumb over the glass face, the memory of studying it only the night before, when it had still been strapped to his wrist almost more than she could bear. Steve had explained to her how the small arrows worked, and why mankind needed it. Why time was important to his people when to hers, it had always been about the journey of the sun across the sky and the endless life stretching before them.

“Diana!”

She turned to the sound of the voice calling her name, and her heart skipped a beat when, for a sliver of a moment, she thought that she had imagined the fire in the sky. That it was—

Her eyes found Chief elbowing his way towards her between the German soldiers gathered around them, no longer under the spell of the God of War but no less lost and confused than they had been because of it. There was Sameer, and then Charlie close on his heel, his jaw set tautly and his eyes wild, hands gripping his shotgun firmly.

And then, suddenly, she was drowning under the avalanche of questions fired at her.

“Who was that?”

“Did you do this, Diana?”

“Where did he go?”

“What happened?”

“Steve--”

She looked up.

Charlie.

Charlie, who couldn’t even look at her, her lower lip trembling and the sorrow on his face splintering Diana’s heart.

They were watching her, waiting for her to explain... explain everything that Diana didn’t even understand herself. A daughter of Zeus—the thought was like a vice squeezing her head, making it impossible to think, yet try as she might, she couldn’t shake it off. Couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t—

She looked around, past the men standing before her, past their sombre, grief-stricken faces. It was not over yet, she thought. She had stopped the fight but the war was not over, it would not be over for a long time. All the deaths, all the destruction and violence... They had to have left a scar on mankind, one that might never heal. What she had done was but a drop in the ocean. And Steve—

Her throat closed up, her breath hitching, her windpipe not wide enough to let the air in.

Steve.

“Diana,” Chief started. She ignored him, her eyes glued to the spot in the sky where she had seen the plane last. There was not even smoke left behind. Nothing. Like it had never been there at all. “We have to go.”

But she wasn’t listening.

She was moving around them and past them, ignoring her name being called behind her, the wind carrying the sound of it away. Her hand clasped tight around Steve’s watch, she was running, and then sprinting across the airfield and towards the wall of trees, a wild hope pulsing in her blood. What if he’d made it? What if he’d—he couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be gone because he had promised her… Last night, he had promised her… She breathed around a sharp pang in her chest, hot tears blurring the horizon. _And a promise is unbreakable_.

Diana stopped in the centre of the field, her muscles screaming and frosted grass crunching beneath her feet, as she searched for something, for anything—

The morning was cold, her ragged breath puffing out in small, white clouds, and the world frozen around her, waiting for the sun to come up. She could barely feel it, the touch of chill to her skin or the wind tugging at her hair. Nothing, but the gaping hole in the centre of her chest, growing wider and wider and wider, threatening to turn her inside out.

“Steve.”

She turned around. And around, her gaze roaming wildly over the shin-high grass and a picket of bare trees as the ground swayed beneath her.

His name bubbled out of her throat, turning into a sob. There was a charred piece of metal lying at her feet, but there was no telling if it had been there for a few hours, or a few weeks, or months even. She walked right past it. It held no answers she yearned for.

Her lungs burned, her chest heaving achingly as she tried to think, to breathe past the heaviness growing inside of her. As she tried to figure out how he could have brought her to this place and then left her behind when she needed him. When she—when she—

Diana sank down to her knees, pressing her hand to her mouth, hot tears spilling down her cheeks, her fingers clutching his watch.

_“I love you.”_

His words exploded in her head, brighter than the fire that had taken him.

No one had told her that winning a war could hurt so badly.

Like it had split her in half.

\---

** _Paris, 2019_ **

Steve Trevor did not remember dying.

There had been no light for him to follow, no golden gates or choir of angels singing him to the heavenly abode. He hadn’t seen himself as if from above like some of the men in the infirmary who had put one foot through that door and then managed to come back would describe it, claiming they had watched the field medics working on saving them.

In reality, it turned out, everything was much more simple.

One moment, his heart had been beating in earnest, pumping his blood through his veins. And the next, there was nothing. As if someone had flipped a switch.

The triviality of it was almost insulting. And that – that sense of bewildered injustice – he knew he was going to remember for the rest of his new life.

Steve drifted to awareness slowly, taking note of the sunlight falling on his face and the sound of voices drifting in through the open window and the smell of… he couldn’t quite place it. Car exhaust and coffee and food, and a delicate note of something floral. A scent of spring.

He wasn’t sure if it made any sense (what with his most recent memories being of frigid November and the smell of rain and mud), but then again – at this moment, few things did.

He blinked his eyes open, squinting against the glare of the sun. His muscles ached, and he may have had a bruised rib from the fight with the German officer who he had kicked out of the plane as he’d climbed inside. But aside from that, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him, all things considered. He was most certainly, definitely, decidedly _not_ dead.

Nestled into his side, Diana stirred when he moved, lifting her head off Steve’s chest.

“Hi,” she whispered, smiling.

His heart jumped into his throat, and for a moment, all he could do was stare. If this was a dream – and she had promised him at least fifty times yesterday that it was not – he certainly didn’t want it to end.

Steve ran his hand over her hair. “Hi,” he croaked, his voice still full of sleep.

Her smile dimmed a little.

“Are you alright?” she asked, reaching her hand over to brush her thumb to his chin, her eyes searching his.

He was not. He most definitely was not.

Steve tried to gather his thoughts but they kept scattering around, bouncing aimlessly off the inside of his skull. There were two things that he had learned the previous night – he had died in 1918 in an attempt to stop the German army from dropping deadly gas on millions of innocent people. Successfully, Diana had assured him. And now, in 2019, he was alive again. How he was supposed to process that, he wasn’t sure yet.

He took a breath, allowing himself to study her for what felt like the first time in a very, very long time. A century. He couldn’t comprehend it, not yet. Maybe not for a while.

“Yeah, I’m--” he started.

A chirping on the nightstand cut him off, that small black thing that Diana had called a phone – how it was working without any cords, Steve had no idea, and it intrigued him greatly – making odd melodic noises. The suddenness of it gave him a start, making him lose the train of his thought momentarily.

With a frustrated groan, Diana dropped her forehead onto the slope of his shoulder. She muttered something under her breath, but Steve wasn’t certain it was even in English.

“Um, I think you should maybe…” he trailed off, his fingers running absently up and down her shoulder.

Diana looked up again. “It’s alright.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said earnestly. “You should… uh, take care of it.”

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to focus, knowing that she might have missed some important message. She was—well, a hero. He didn’t know if heroes got phone calls when there was trouble, the whole 21st century thing still not sitting quite right with him. Maybe they did. Either way, Steve didn’t want to be responsible for something going wrong because of him.

Diana hesitated for another moment, a faint frown appearing between her brows as she watched him. And then she pulled away from him and, picking up the black thingy, slipped out of the bed.

Steve tried not to stare. Which was… which was impossible, truth be told. Which reminded him that they hadn’t only _talked_ the night before. Which made his face grow hot and he had to make a conscious effort to stop himself from calling her back and asking her to maybe ignore that phone device for a while. It had stopped making those high-pitched sounds by then anyway. Maybe it wasn’t that important, after all.

Diana glanced at him over her shoulder and smirked before she padded out of the room.

He dropped his head back down on the pillow and stared at the ceiling, unable to stop that damned foolish smile from breaking across his face.

The future. Yeah, that might take a while to process.

Steve’s gaze moved around the room, pausing briefly on the open window and a sea of rooftops stretching all the way to the horizon. Paris. The last time he had seen Paris, it had looked quite dreary. He certainly liked this version better, the one with sunlight bouncing off the windows and laughter drifting in from somewhere below.

Diana had told him the basics last night – about being the daughter of a god and defeating Ares and some things that had happened since then. He wondered how it had left him with more questions than he’d had before, his mind still reeling. 

“I made a deal,” she had said when Steve had asked her about his miraculous – and there really wasn’t another word for it, not to him, anyway – return.

He had yet to find out what kind of deal that was, and with whom, and what it had cost her. (It had to cost something.)

He took another breath and ran his hand down his face, reminding himself that they had time for that now. All the time in the world.

After a few minutes, with Diana’s voice drifting in from another room – a conversation that sort of sounded like it might take a while – Steve kicked the covers off and climbed out of the bed. He considered his clothes, the old clothes that he had fought in, for a few moments. They would have to do something about that. Later. He might not know much about this century yet and what the world was like now, but he doubted that a war uniform from a long time ago would suffice. Yet, for now, those would have to do, he decided, the image of taking Diana to shop for clothes when they’d first arrived in London still vivid in his mind. Look how the tables had turned.

With a sigh, Steve pulled on the pants - part of the German uniform he’d hoped he’d never have to wear again, but it didn’t seem like walking around half-naked was appropriate. (He’d have to ask about that. It had been a while, after all.) And then the shirt, remembering that it was Diana who had buttoned it up the last time, on the morning before he—

Well, before he had blown himself up.

Steve pushed the thought away as he stepped out of the bedroom. There was a bathroom right across the hall. The biggest one he had ever seen, with a tub that could fit at least three people. Or maybe it was a 21st century thing, he couldn’t tell. Maybe everyone had bathrooms now big enough to fit his entire old apartment. Diana’s voice was coming from the room next door, and, choosing to give her some space to deal with whatever it was she was dealing with, Steve turned in the opposite direction.

He passed the living room – bright, airy, with bookshelves lining one of the walls and a thick carpet on the floor – and kept walking until he found himself in the kitchen. It was just as bright, and just as airy, and it looked like something straight out of the futuristic space novel that he had loved as a young boy. What with all the chrome appliances and polished surfaces and some sort of control panels that made him wonder, once again, if he was dreaming.

Not that he’d ever dream up something like this, he thought. Not in a thousand years.

He paused in the middle of the kitchen, the tiled floor cool beneath his bare feet, and looked around. This was her life now. A few days ago, he had watched her try to figure out the mechanics of a revolving door, and how she had a phone that didn’t need cords and a dozen other things that Steve didn’t even know the names of. Well, okay, he sort of figured out the fridge. That was the easy one. And that massive thing sitting against the opposite wall had to be a stove. The rest—well, the rest she’d have to walk him through at some point. There was no way he’d work them all out of his own.

Except—

His lips twitched when he spotted a coffee maker. It looked nothing like anything Steve would ever have imagined but the pot of coffee sitting underneath some odd contraption with blinking lights and the fresh, bitter smell of it was unmistakable.

Steve stepped towards it, hand reaching for one of the cups on the rack.

The coffee burned his tongue, its taste rich and like nothing he had ever tried before. Then again, it wouldn’t be fair. Wouldn’t be fair to compare it to anything he’d had to live off at the front when the food had to be cooked over an open fire and coffee feeling like a luxury more often than not.

He sipped it, studying the space around him. Immaculate and neat. He didn’t know much about Diana – yet – past the few things he had learned during the brief time they had spent together, but her house did not surprise him. It felt like her.

Steve walked over to the fridge, smiling at the half a dozen tacky magnets stuck to it, and a postcard showing a strip of ocean framed by a semi-circle of white sand, palm trees swaying in the breeze. He pulled it from under a magnet to have a better look, turning it in his hand. On the back, it was signed by someone named Lois, although Steve refused to read the message on the off chance it was personal. Still, the image looked stunning, reminding him of Diana’s island and the water so bright blue he could barely stand to look at it.

Another thought occurred to him them, a memory from two days and a hundred years ago. Something he had said to her on that morning…

He looked back to the hallway, straining his ears. Diana was still on the phone, as far as he could tell. Speaking French, if he was not mistaken. Which gave him a few minutes, perhaps.

Steve set his half-finished cup of coffee down and pulled the fridge door open. He peered inside, inspecting the contents of the shelves in mild bewilderment. What the hell was a yogurt? He blinked at odd-looking packages. What the hell was a _wasabi_? Steve scrunched his face. He could figure this out later.

He found a carton of eggs, and some bread and cheese. (Since when did they start putting butter in crates?) There was milk, too, and Steve pulled it out as well. He was hardly a particularly skilled cook but he could manage an omelette without ruining it, he decided.

By the time Diana appeared in the kitchen, he had found a couple of bowls and a pan. And after spotting an _electric_ toothbrush in the bathroom earlier, he was particularly thrilled to discover regular cutlery in a drawer near the sink.

“I’m sorry it’s taken so--” Diana started and stopped short when she spotted him at the counter, a whisk in hand.

Steve paused, feeling suddenly like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and aware belatedly of having never asked for her permission to do any of this. Last night, she had told him—she had said… He swallowed. Did any of that mean that she was alright with him going through her cupboards?

He stepped away from the counter and wiped his hands hastily on the dishtowel.

“Hey, I…” His gaze darted to the cut cheese and half a dozen eggshells. He took a breath and turned to her. “I thought maybe you’d want…”

Did she even like omelettes? Maybe he should have started with asking that.

He ran his hand over his hair, acutely aware then of the hundred years that had passed since the last morning they’d spent together. Last night, Diana had told him that she loved him, and at that moment, his heart all but burst in his chest. She had said it over and over and over again, until Steve could feel those words pulsing beneath his skin. Their separation didn’t matter much then, not with her hands on his body and his lips on her skin.

Right now, though, the century apart was like a gaping abyss between them that had left Steve feeling like he was falling with nothing to hold on to.

Diana was looking at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth and her hand frozen near her chest. She had put on a shirt, an oversized one that fell down to her mid-thighs, which did nothing to help him stay focused. His gaze swept over her legs before he willed himself to look at her face. Not that _that_ worked any better.

She took in his clothes, too, his bare feet, the mess on the counter (that Steve fully intended to clean up once he was done – _if_ he’d get there.)

“Is everything--” he tried again, his gaze flickering past her shoulder. “Do you have to go save the world?”

For a moment, she looked confused. And then he watched the most brilliant smile spring across her face, her eyes crinkling.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and stepping towards him. “No, everything is fine.”

“Oh.” He stared at her dumbly, his heart threatening to go into overdrive. “That’s, ah… that’s good.”

Another moment passed, and by then she was standing right before him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her without having to touch her. She was the one to reach for him first, her fingers trailing over his jaw and then sweeping through his hair.

Steve closed his eyes and leaned into her touch until her palm was cupped over his cheek and he decided that he had never felt more at peace. Blindly, he curled his fingers around her hips and drew her closer still until their heads were resting together. It was easier that way, easier to think with his eyes closed and her second hand pressed over his heart.

That way, it didn’t matter what year it was or what the purpose was of all the odd-looking equipment around them. That way, he could just be.

When Steve opened his eyes, she was watching him, her expression kind.

His throat grew tight for, perhaps, the millionth time since they’d met. Might as well get used to it, Steve thought absently.

He swallowed, hard, trying to find his voice again.

“Is it alright that I…?” he started once more. “That time in Veld, I told you--”

“You promised me breakfast. I remember,” Diana whispered.

“You do? I mean, it’s been… it’s been so long.”

“Of course, I do, Steve.”

He felt her hand slide to rest on the back of his neck, her fingers threading through his hair.

“Earlier… you didn’t answer,” she murmured. “When we got interrupted--Are you alright?”

A burst of nervous laughter bubbled up in his chest. Steve felt his lips twist into a humourless smile.

“It’s a lot,” he admitted honestly.

“I know.”

There was reassurance in her voice, and it was the softness of it that felt like a blow that knocked all the air out of him.

“Diana--”

“Yes?”

His fingers flexed on her hips, and once again, he begged silently, _Please don’t take her away from me_.

Back then, in 1918, the idea of living his life after the war without Diana had been unbearable. (Which was ludicrous and insane – he had only known her for a handful of days. Had known nothing about what she’d wanted to do next, whether she’d even wanted to be with him.) And if that had been bad, the thought of figuring out the world - a world that was as alien to him as it could be - on his own right now was downright excruciating. 

Steve inhaled, willing his heartbeat to settle.

“It’s been a long time,” he said as he lifted his hand to twist a strand of her hair around his finger. “I understand if you’ve--” _moved on_. He couldn’t say that. “If things have changed,” he finished lamely.

Never mind that they had just slept together again. He couldn’t bring himself to mention that, or even think of it, for that matter. 

Yet, there was a traitorous flush creeping up his cheeks anyway. 

Diana smiled again.

“Steve.” He looked up. “I’ve loved you for a hundred years.” She paused, and he watched her mouth work for a few moments before she spoke again. “I mourned you, and I grieved for you. And all the while, I kept loving you.” Her palm closed over his cheek again, the warmth of her touch soothing the ragged edges of his weary soul. “Do you think that I’m going to change my mind now that I have you back?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again, the heat of shame making his face burn. Hearing her put it that way had certainly changed his perspective on his concerns.

“Steve,” she said when he didn’t say anything, her thumb running over his cheekbone.

He decidedly loved the sound of his name when she said it, he thought. It was definitely his second most favourite thing in the world, right after the words of love that he would never, ever tire of hearing. Not even if he got to live for a thousand years.

“Yeah?”

She kissed him then, craning her neck and tilting his face to hers. And kissed him, and kissed him until his every worry and doubt and concern melted away, replaced by that impossible lightness he remembered from that morning a hundred years ago. One that had made him feel like flying.

He felt her hand curl over a fistful of his shirt as if she didn’t want to let go.

When she pulled away, he was breathless and dazed, and stupidly, ridiculously happy.

“I missed you,” Diana whispered.

This time, he smiled, feeling his very soul unfurl in his chest.

“I missed you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for making it this far, I truly hope you've enjoyed this piece :)
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated! Or just come yell about this incredible couple, I'm always happy to yell back.


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